Kulwant Singh Virk
Kulwant Singh Virk is an eminent short-story writer. His stories are fast-moving, well-trimmed and modern. His portrayal of the rural society of central Punjab is gripping with intellectual, rational and psychological approach. He has been able to delineate realistically men in the services with an urban middle class background besides character drawn from various starta of society.
He was born at village Phularwan (Pakistan). He got his Master's degree in English from Khalsa College, Amritsar in 1940. He joined the army in 1942 and was a Liaison Officer during the partition days. Later, he edited the journals Advance (English) and Jagriti (Punjabi) for sometime.
He also worked as Director, Communication Centre, Agriculture University, Ludhiana. He is known for his psychological but realistic portrayal of characters. He selects some common incident of life and then, by virtue of his intellectual acumen, renders it into a story. His Chah vela (The breakfast time, 1950), Dharti te akash (The earth and the sky, 1951), Tudi di pand (A bundle of straws, 1952), Ekas ke ham barak (Children of the Lord, 1955), Dudh da chapad (A pool of milk, 1961), Golhw (The figs, 1961), and Naven lok (New people, 1967) reveal the different facets of peasantry and their changing milieu because of education and economic development.
His stories are epiphanies of life. The characters of his stories are loved and sympathised with by the reader notwithstanding their drawbacks and defeats in life. With a few subtle touches, he paints the inner conflict of his characters, ana men does not bother to 'round-up' the tale.
He was honoured as an eminent writer by the Department of Languages in 1959. His collection of short-stories, Naven lok, earned him the Sahitya Akademi Award for 1969. His work was also awarded by the Punjab Arts Council in 1981.
At times, he lets his thoughts pass through the prism of Marxist ideology and tailors some of his stories accordingly. Nevertheless, he has added some new thematic and expressional dimensions to Punjabi short-story. He has explored the susceptibility and latent energies of this genre and given the stories a certain feel of complexities of modern life.
